NickMiddleton

Given that the two primary sources for the BRP "BGB" were Stormbringer 5 and CoC 6, there's a certain symmetry to that... Nick

The Elric! saga, the source fiction for the setting of the old Stormbringer / Elric! game was (especially in its original core stories) distinctly dark and gloomy - <SPOILERS!!>> The protagonist kills pretty much everyone he ever loves or is friends with; destroys his own country / capital city and makes exiles of his surviving kinfolk; helps set in motion events that lead to the end of the world; ultimately, activates the doomsday device that DOES end the world and create the new one and even then, is ultimately betrayed and survived by a dangerous and destructive entity. And along the way there is a LOT of mournful angst, byronic-self analysis and bitter lessons in how curel, heartless and down right depressing the world is. Now, the oriignal series in particualr are written with huge energy and pace, many of the characters are compelling and the protagonist frequently regards the whole thing as a bad joke he shouldn't let get him down and displays a huge gusto for life - so they are well worth reading. But they are definitely one of the early examples of "Dark Fantasy". Magic World doesn't use that setting. But there's nothing inherently "Dark Fantasy" in the rules per se - it's a BRP variant, so it's NOT as inherently heroic as D&D 3.x or 4, but it's not as gritty and low powered as starting RQIII or CoC. The sample setting in Magic World, the Southern Reaches, did set the tone somewhat for the core book - but it's a SAMPLE, the game assumes that chronicler's will use the rules in other settings (their own or published). Having said that, Southern Reaches is not "Dark Fantasy" in the sense the Young Kingdoms was. There's more than a touch of European / Celtic folk tales and mythology as well as a slightly more "post-Tolkien" fantasy (it has Elves and Dwarves for a start). One could certainly run the SR as Dark Fantasy; one could equally run then as "Romantic Fantasy" in the style of Tamora Pierce - neither are the native tone of either the Southern Reaches as presented in the Magic World core book, nor the MW Core book in general. Cheers, Nick

Yes and Magic World is currently in print and pretty much identical to Elric!... Now, if you let people run around with Demon Swords etc in Elric!, it can get very lethal, but the baseline characters are tougher and a more competent than in RQIII, and a few judicious tweaks can obviate the problems a lack of healing magic might cause. To wit: use heroic hit points for PC's (THP=SIZ+CON); allow a Physik roll for each individual wound (and possibly multiple applications, say once for every 8 hours rest etc); don't have 0 THP be death, but rather "dying" and allow suitable intervention to stave off the final curtain where it suits the story. Cheers, Nick

Or, to go even simpler - just a single "Sorcery" skill. To cast a spell requires the MP and a successful skill roll. Special and Critical successes on the casting roll can either reduce the MP cost or extend the spell effect; fumbles can cause minor magical mishaps. Spending multiples of the spells standard MP cost can improve the base casting chance - so double the MP for double the casting chance, but will also make fumbles more significant. Plus the Sorcery skill can be used for non spell casting tasks such as recognizing which spell another caster is attempting; determine what entity a summoning ritual was calling based on whats left behind etc. Otherwise, keep the Magic World spells / magic system as is. Simple, highly compatible and adds an element of skill use to using Magic. Cheers, Nick

Charles Green (the author of that monograph) will know better but I suspect Factured Hopes, like my own Outpost 19, was something we as individual authors wanted to do and both we AND Chaosium hoped MIGHT sell well enough to warrant adapting to a full distribution book. A few Cthulhu monographs have done this, and there was talk at one point of Classic Fantasy going the same route but I'm not aware of any original monograph BRP titles that actually have. I keep daydreaming about writing up one of my BRP SF settings and offering it to Chaosium, but without a radical change in my circumstances to free up some time, it's really not likely to happen: my personal gaming groups favour contemporary, historical or fantasy settings so my game writing time tends to get prioritised to what I'm currently running. Cheers, Nick.

That is exactly the sort of thing I had in mind whilst writing the arête chapter, and influenced the rules (and some of the examples) I wrote. Cheers, Nick

Ringworld's problem was licensing related - Ben may know more, but I recall stories of Chaosium giving copies away at a US Convention because they were not allowed to sell it anymore. Chaosium have had one hugely successful RPG - Call of Cthulhu. It has remained a viable line for over thirty years, with a prodigious back catalogue of material by them and licensees over that period. They have had three moderately successful lines - RuneQuest (few dozen products over twenty years); Stormbringer (dozen or so products over ~25 years) and Pendragon (dozen or so products in little over a decade). Two are licensed, two not - but ALL gave a specific setting. In general, the RPGs that have been very successful seem to have had substantial support, and to have a setting thatcaught a mass of gamers imaginations. With the exception of Traveller, ALL the successful (high volume of product, published over five years or more) SF games have been tied to specific settings (Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, Star Wars d6 / d20, Star Trek FASA)... So I think it's more the absence of a "killer IP". Back in the eighties, Niven's known space might have been that, but licensing issues stymied that game line and Chaosium have since neither been offered nor had access to such an IP. Certainly back when one of the yahoo BRP groups was discussing the idea of a generic BRP SF sourcebook, that's the point Charlie Krank raised. Given the popularity of hacks / ports / remixes these days I don't think the single setting is quite as critical as it once was... But looking at successful RPG lines of the last few years, the compelling setting still seems to be key - Hellfrost, Shadows of Esteren, Numenera, Eclipse Phase, Cthulutech. Even very successful generic games like Savage Worlds and FATE have built their reputations as the engine underlying popular settings. Cheers, Nick

In various states of completion but none finished as work continues to eat my time. A couple of conversions of old Elric! Scenarios to MW and the Southern Reaches Some original MW scenarios (some Southern Reaches, some other settings). Some rules / GM advice about various campaign related topics (various topics). I did a bunch of creatures for the upcoming bestiary, albeit I have no idea if / when that will see release. Cheers, Nick

Shiny! When does it get released? PDF only or hard copy as well?? Cheers, Nick

No, not to my knowledge anyway, and I was watching for it quite closely at the time. Jason's Slaves of Fate is the only DLoM supplement to see print as far as I recall, and the conversion notes for that are up at Marcus' site, but Straits of Chaos never saw print to the best of my knowledge, and reading between the lines in various archives I'm not sure Chaosium ever had a publishable manuscript n house for it. cheers, Nick

Chaosium published a boxed Hawkmoon game back in the 1980's that was a version of the then Stormbringer system adapted to the Tragic Millenium setting. Unlike Steve Perrin and Ken St Andre's Stormbringer, which despite its inaccuracies and errors somehow caught the spirit and feel of the Elric stories remarkably well, the boxed Hawkmoon felt rather thin and didn't really capture the feel of either the Runestaff sequence or the Chronicles of Castle Brass. It got one supplement. A decade or so back, Lawrence Whitaker (Loz of the Design Mechanism / RQ6) wrote and Chasoium published a monograph for Stormbringer 5th edition that superbly presented the Tragic Millenium setting for that game. More recently Mongoose Publishing (when they had the Eternal Champion license) did a Hawkmoon game based on MRQ1, which they also published several supplements for, some of which Loz wrote IIRC. Cheers, Nick

From the BGB entry for the Martial Arts skill: There was a thread back in 2011 - - and the topic has come up in a few others as well. Cheers, Nick

My standard advice is to use EITHER Fixed AV and hit locations OR variable AV and solely total hit points. In general, a dagger SHOULD BE pretty useless against full plate, apart from in very specific edge cases... which is what criticals and specials represent. Cheers, Nick

Both! Seriously! Broad difficulty I do by the BRP system (albeit, I was using it as a house rule in Elric! games in the mid-90's and may have got the idea from a a Cthulhu game even earlier...) and then smaller sacle effects I use additions and subtractions. It's always made more sense to me to have both. Cheers, Nick

It's a setting by John Snead to go with Enlightened magic - http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?621868-BRP-Enlightened-Magic!-Discuss!!&p=18047131#post18047131 Beyond that, I know nothing! Cheers, Nick

Currently available as a BRP monograph, believe an RQ6 based version is in the works. Cheers, Nick

Not really. If I was going to create one I'd start with Deep Magic (from the Magic World supplement Advanced Sorcery) and adapt to suit. Cheers, Nick

Punktown has substantial cyberpunk elements. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1799183063/punktown-an-rpg-setting-for-call-of-cthulhu-and-br It has been (and continues to be) a long hard road for Tom Lynch and co getting the Punktown BRP book done, but they seem very close and I'm optimistic it will see release soon. Cheers, Nick

So, taking a look at Chaosium's website this morning and I noticed this: http://www.chaosium.com/magic-world-quick-start-pdf/ Have grabbed copy but have yet to read it in depth. Looks to have a quick intro to the rules, a short scenario and some pre-gen characters. Cheers, Nick

Magic World ( I think copying directly from Elric!, but my copy of that is at home) does it this way: As an old RQ hand, I generally impose a minimum DEX rank "cost" of anything as 5 DEX (this matches a lot of the spot rules e.g. Careful Aim). Cheers, Nick

Note that in some implementations of the DEX rank system, it doesn't mention meters - it just talks about fractions of MOV. As early as the original Worlds of Wonder version of the DEX rank system, combining actions (so, moving to attack someone) halved your effective DEX rank for that round, but since the original Elric! the concept has been that moving first will delay other actions! and moving your WHOLE MOV takes a full round. Cheers, Nick

Big gold Book page 176 - Fate Points. It's boxed out, but takes up a whole page. Cheers, Nick

Err, that's entirely reproducible using DEX ranks systems such as the one in Magic World, or, indeed Cal of Cthulhu 6e... Nick

Never been sold on the MRQ method and whilst i'm VERY fond of the old RQIII / SB1 skill categories there are a bit fiddly. I'm increasingly a fan of the Magic World "simplified" category bonus (flat half governing stat as bonus, so Manipulation is 1/2 DEX, Communication is 1/2 APP etc). Cheers, Nick

"But, and this is my point, most rolls in Legend will be directly opposed by another roll, where as they won't be in BRP." Um, that's not actually true of the current BRP "Big Gold Book" rules, y'know - the default combat rule is that the defense roll (Dodge or Parry) is opposing the offensive roll, with results cross indexed on the results table on page 193. Outside of combat, opposed skills are discussed on pages 173 and various alternative options detailed on page 174. cheers, Nick